Here’s a new update to our analysis of how small-businesses are responding to the COVID-19 crisis using @Homebase time clock data, done with @alexbartik, Marianne Bertrand, Feng Lin & @rothstein_jesse: https://irle.berkeley.edu/labor-market-impacts-of-covid-19-on-hourly-workers-in-small-and-medium-sized-businesses-four-facts-from-homebase-data-2/">https://irle.berkeley.edu/labor-mar...
Much of the hours reductions we identified in previous updates persists, but some firms are reopening. As of last week, about one-third of firms remained fully shutdown. That’s down from a high of 45% in April.
Below, we visualize the ratio of hours worked at each firm each week relative to late January. Hours collapse in mid-March, and nearly half of firms shutdown by early April. But over the past two weeks, a fraction of firms reopen.
Firms in states where shutdown orders have been rolled back are more likely to have reopened. Hours were 35% higher in these states than their respective low, compared to 26% in other states. Still, hours remain far below their baseline averages in all regions and industries.
Of the firms that ever shutdown, about 30% have since reopened and remained open through last week.
By last week, these re-opened firms had collectively regained about 35% of their baseline hours and 40% of their baseline employment levels. And they’re mainly rehiring workers they employed before shutting down.
Firms that shutdown have only restored about 14% of their pre-shutdown hours. Two-thirds of those missing hours are due to most firms remaining shutdown. Another 19% are still lost because reopened firms are operating at reduced scale.
Thanks again to @joinhomebase for sharing their data, and to the teams at @CAPolicyLab, @UChiPovertyLab, @RustandyCenter, @ChicagoBooth, and @IRLE for helping us put this together.